The Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition

by Richard Rhodes

Eisenhower had watched Colonel General Alfried Jodl sign the act of military surrender in a schoolroom in Rheims—the temporary war room of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force—in the early morning hours of May 7. Eisenhower’s aides had attempted then to draft a suitably eloquent message to the Combined Chiefs reporting the official surrender. “I tried one myself,” Eisenhower’s chief of staff Walter Bedell Smith remembers, “and like all my associates, groped for resounding phrases as fitting accolades to the Great Crusade and indicative of our dedication to the great task just accomplished.”2305 The Supreme Commander listened quietly for a time, thanked everyone for trying and dictated his own unadorned report: The mission of this Allied force was fulfilled at 0241, local time, May 7th, 1945.2306 Better to be brief, better than resounding phrases. Twenty million Soviet soldiers and civilians died of privation or in battle in the Second World War. Eight million British and Europeans died or were killed and another five million Germans. The Nazis murdered six million Jews in ghettos and concentration camps.